Have Southern Baptists transcended the South?

Are Southern Baptists still southern – or has Americas largest non-Catholic
body become an entity that has transcended both its name and the culture that
birthed it?

Are Southern Baptists still southern – or has Americas largest non-Catholic
body become an entity that has transcended both its name and the culture that
birthed it?

A group of historians and scholars tackled the question during
a recent conference on Southern Baptists in a new millennium at Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary. (See related articles on Page 10)

Most participants agreed the Southern Baptist Convention has
become increasingly a nationwide denomination and is less restricted in influence
to the South.

Nevertheless, its connections with the South run far deeper
than merely its name – and the Southern Baptist Convention itself remains
an integral part of southern culture, participants explained.

“For the time being, it seems to me, the Southern Baptist
Convention is more like country music or NASCAR,” said John Shelton Reed,
professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina. “You know it
is something that is still rooted in its region and still reflects the South
and its ethos, even though now it has a much broader appeal. I think for some
time to come, it is going to be flavored by the South.

“The South may be becoming less important for the Southern
Baptist Convention, but the Southern Baptist Convention is still terribly important
to the South,” Reed suggested. “If you want to understand something
about the South, you have to understand something about its dominant religion,
its state church, which you all (the SBC) are, like it or not.”

Reed said the Southern Baptist Convention influence is so pervasive
in the South that it is next to impossible for a person to grow up there and
not be influenced by the denomination – regardless of religious heritage.
That influence continues, he said.

“Its very difficult, or at least it used to be difficult,
to grow up in the South, whatever your denomination, and not be part Southern
Baptist,” Reed said.

“I went to college in Massachusetts, and my best friend
(there) was from Arkansas,” he noted. “I was an Episcopalian, and
he was a Christian Scientist. One of the reasons we liked each other (is because)
we all knew the same Baptist hymns, because we used to sing them in school (in
the South).”

Another panelist noted that the Southern Baptist Convention
is so woven into the tapestry of southern culture that it is difficult to be
“fully Southern Baptist” without growing up within the denomination.

However, because of the influx of non-southerners into the
South, Barry Hankins said he believes this is changing somewhat.

“Sam Hill, one of the noted historians of southern culture
in our generation, used a term I like in saying the South has a culture
ethnicity about it,” said Hankins, associate director of the J.M.
Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Hankins said that term resonated with him because he was a
Michigan native who attended Baylor and joined a Southern Baptist church. “There
was always a sort of assumed knowledge that I didnt have,” he said.
“Now, thats obviously changing both as more diverse people come into
the South and as Southern Baptist churches spring up all over the country.”
(BP)

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